by Colin Dexter
“Only to take a bottle—I told you that.”
“You fancied her?”
“Who wouldn't? Once she's got the hots on …”
Morse appeared to have lost his way, and it was Lewis who completed the questioning: “Where were you earlier on the Friday when Flynn and Repp were murdered?”
“In the morning? Went into Oxford shopping. Not much luck, though. Tried to get a couple of birthday presents. You'd hardly credit it, but both o’ my kids were born the same day—3rd o’ September.”
“Real coincidence.”
“Depends which way you look at it, Sergeant. Others'd call it precision screwing, wouldn't they?”
It was a crude remark, and Morse's face was a study in distaste as Biff en continued: “Couldn't find anything in the shops though, could I? So I sent their mum a check instead.”
Downstairs, it was far too early for any brisk activity; but three of the regulars were already foregathered there, to each of whom Biffen proffered a customary greeting.
“Evening, Mr. Bagshaw! Evening, Mr. Blewitt!”
One of the warring partners allowed himself a perfunctory nod, but the other was happily intoning a favorite passage from the cribbage litany: “Fifteen-two; fifteen-four; two's six; three's nine; and three's twelve!”
With an “Evening, Mr. Thomas!” the landlord had completed his salutations.
In response, the youth pressed the start button yet again, his eyes keenly registering the latest alignment of the symbols on the fruit machine.
“Now! What's it to be, gentlemen? On the house, of course.”
“Pint of bitter,” said Morse, “and an orange juice. Want some ice in it, Lewis?”
A bored-looking barmaid folded up the Mirror and pulled the hand-pump on the Burton Ale.
Fifty-four
The time you won your town the race
We chaired you through the market-place;
Man and boy stood cheering by,
And home we brought you shoulder-high.
To-day, the road all runners come,
Shoulder-high we bring you home,
And set you at your threshold down,
Townsman of a stiller town.
(A. E. Housman, A Shropshire Lad, XIX)
It was just after 7:30 P.M. that same evening in the car park of the Maiden's Arms that Morse, after admitting to a very strange lapse of memory in missing The Archers, suddenly decided on a new line of inquiry that seemed to Lewis (if possible) even stranger: “Drive me round to Holmes's place in Burford.”
“Why—?” began a weary Lewis.
“Get on with it!”
The ensuing conversation was brief. “What did you make of Biff en, sir?”
“He decided to enlist in the ranks of the liars, like the rest of ‘em.”
“Well, yes… if Mrs. Barron was telling me the truth.”
“Probably not important anyway.”
Lewis waited a while. “What is important, sir?”
“Barron! That's what's important. I'm still not absolutely sure I was on the wrong track but…”
“… but it looks as if you were.”
Morse nodded.
“What did you make of—?”
“Concentrate on the driving, Lewis! They're not used to Formula-One fanatics round here.”
A blurred shape slowly formed through the frosted glass of the front door, its green paint peeling or already peeled, which was finally opened by a pale-faced, wispily haired woman of some fifty-plus summers.
Lewis paraded his ID. “Mrs. Holmes?”
With hardly a glance at the documentation, the woman neatly reversed her wheelchair and led her visitors through the narrow, bare-floored, virtually bare-walled passageway—for indeed there was just the one framed memento of something on the wall to the left.
“I suppose it's about Roy?” She spoke with the dispirited nasal whine of a Birmingham City supporter whose team has just been defeated.
In the living room, in a much-frayed armchair, sat a youth smoking a cigarette, drinking directly from a can of Bass, a pair of black-stringed amplifiers stuck in his ears.
He vaguely reminded Morse of someone; but that was insufficient to stop him taking an intense and instant dislike to the boy, who had made no attempt to straighten his lounging sprawl, or to miss a single lyric from the latest rap record—until he saw Morse's lips speaking directly to him.
“Wha’?” Reluctantly Roy Holmes removed one of the ear-pieces.
“Why didn't you answer the door yourself, lad, and give your mum a break?”
The youth's eyes stared back with cold hostility. “Couldn't ‘ear it, could I? Not wi’ this on.”
No Brummy accent there; instead, the Oxfordshire burr with its curly vowels.
His mother began to explain. “It's the police, Roy—”
“Again? Bin there, ‘aven't I. Made me statement. What more do they want? Accident, wonnit? I didn't try to ‘ide nuthin. What the fuck?”
Morse responded quietly to the outburst. “We appreciate your cooperation. But do you know what you've made of yourself in life so far? Shall I tell you, lad? You're about the most uncouth and loutish fourteen-year-old I've ever—”
“Fifteen-year-old,” interposed Mrs. Holmes, more anxious, it seemed, to correct her son's natal credentials than to deny his innate crudity. “Fifteen on March the 26th. Got it wrong in the papers, didn't they?”
“Well, well! Same birthday as Housman.”
Silence.
“And” (Morse now spoke directly to the mother) “he'll be able to smoke in a year's time, and go to the pub for a pint a couple of years after that—if you give him some pocket money, Mrs. Holmes. Because I can't see him earning anything much himself, not in his present frame of mind.”
If Lewis had earlier noticed the telltale sign of drug dependency in the boy's eyes, he now saw a wider blaze of hatred there; and was sure that Morse was similarly and equally aware of both, as Mrs. Holmes switched her wheelchair abruptly around and faced Morse aggressively:
“It was an accident—could happen to anybody—he didn't mean no trouble—like he said—like he told you … That's right, isn't it, Roy?”
“Leave me be!”
“Perhaps it wasn't you we came to Burford to see.”
For a few seconds there was a look of bewilderment, of anxiety almost, on Roy Holmes's face. Then, draining his can of beer, he got to his feet, and left the room.
Seconds later the front door slammed behind him with potentially glass-shattering force.
“What time will he be back?” asked Lewis.
She shrugged her narrow shoulders.
“You worry about him?”
“Everybody worries about him.”
“How long's he been on drugs?”
“Year—over a year.”
“How does he pay for them?”
“You tell me.”
“Not much of a son, is he?” said Morse.
She shook what once must have been a very pretty head with a gesture of desperation.
“Does he get the money from you?”
“I've got nothing to give him. He's not stupid. He knows that.”
“But… ?” Morse pointed to the empty beer can; the empty packet of cigarettes.
“Idunno.”
Morse got to his feet. Lewis too.
“How long… ?” Morse nodded to the wheelchair.
“Six years.”
Morse stopped in front of the one framed picture in the dingy hallway. Not a picture, though. A diploma.
For the second time that day Lewis noticed a film of tears in a woman's eyes; and for the second time that day Morse felt a shudder of excitement run along his shoulders.
Before they left, Morse turned to the erstwhile athlete. “The gods haven't smiled on you much, have they?”
“Not that I've noticed.”
“It's important for your son to do exactly what they've told him—with his Police Protection Order. You k
now that?”
“I suppose so.”
“And if you want cheering up a bit, Mrs. Holmes, I'll tell you a big secret: I was about his age when I started drinking myself. A year younger, in fact.”
But the confession appeared to bring little comfort to the woman maneuvering her wheelchair to the front door.
Morse gave her his card. “One last thing. If there's anything you've forgotten to tell me? Anything you've not been willing to tell me… ?”
As the two detectives walked along the litter-strewn path up to a wooden front gate stripped of all but two of its vertical slats, Lewis's mind puzzled itself over those last few words. But Morse seemed deep in thought; and any questions for the moment, he knew, would be wholly inopportune.
Fifty-five
Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every prejudice and error that doth so easily beset us.
(St. Paul, Hebrews, ch. XII, v. 1)
In his own way, Lewis was not unhappy that Morse had failed to put in his usual, comparatively early appearance the following morning. His own preferred program of alibi confirmation had earlier (as we have seen) been endorsed by Morse, albeit with muted enthusiasm; and Lewis was content to pursue such a program solo.
It now appeared that Morse's simplistic hypothesis—that of casting Barron as a double murderer—was wholly discounted. It would have been convenient, certainly, if it had been Barron; and if Barron in turn had been murdered by whoever was behind … well, behind everything, really. Frank Harrison, say. And why not Frank Harrison? In Lewis's betting book he was the one runner in the field with the requisite bank balance to fork out the regular dollops of hush money. But with the potential collapse of global equity markets, such a bank balance might soon not be looking so healthy. And one of the laws of economics, as Lewis knew, was that people with pots of money could easily lose pots of money, including the person who hitherto had seen it as a matter of self-interest to divert some proportion of such monies to others: to Flynn, to Repp, perhaps to Barron. Then, almost miraculously, two of them had been crossed off the payroll; and if the third one …
Lewis could understand Morse's thinking perfectly well. But it had been wrong, as the great man had (virtually) admitted the previous evening. There had been that dramatic development in the case: Barron's death had been an accident. And the coincidence of Barron being knocked off a ladder by accident at virtually the same time someone else had planned to murder him by criminal design had clearly struck even Morse (a confirmed believer in coincidence) as quite extraordinarily improbable.
So what was needed now was a bit of old-fashioned procedure: some immediate phone calls; some speedy arrangements of interviews; some urgent checking of alibis. And so fortunate was Lewis that by 9:45 he had written down a firm timetable:
10:15 a.m.—interview with Simon Harrison (Jordan-Hill)
11:15 a.m.—interview with Frank Harrison (Randolph)
12:15 p.m.—interview with Sarah Harrison (Ratcliffe Infirmary)
Back in HQ just after 2 P.M. (still no news from Morse), Lewis looked down, not without some satisfaction, at the notes he had made:
SIMON H
Friday, July 24: at his desk all A.M.—lunch in canteen—back at his desk till 4 P.M. when he took bus down to Summertown dentist (hr). Home c. 6 P.M. Plenty of witnesses on and off all day, it seems. Monday, Aug 3: (day off work) A.M. drove via M40 → Stokenchurch hoping for siting of red kite there—tried earlier in the year at Llandudno—both trips unsuccessful (keen bird-watcher). Back for lunch in White Hart (Wytham)—witnesses would include landlord etc.
Impossible for him to have been in on the Flynn/Repp murders. Could have pushed Barron off the ladder, if we wanted him for that, which we don't. Deafer than I thought and lip-reads a lot. Names a big problem: Flynn OK, but Repp and Barron hard for him—its something to do with the labial consonents (so he says). Intelligent, bit too intense, loner (?).
FRANK H
Friday, July 24: meeting in London office 10-11:45 A.M. with four colleagues. (Check!) Monday, Aug 3: at Randolph (booked in the day before). Breakfast 7:50-8:40 A.M. (approx) with “partner” (real honey acc. to Ailish at the bar). Car apparently not moved from Resident's garage that day. As suspect? Same as SH (see above). Smart business exec. type, pleasant enough, bit abrupt, not short of the pennies—asked me to join him in glass of champange (£7 a go!) Thinning on top, thickening in middle. Seems used to getting what he wants in life.
SARAH H
Friday, July 24: at BDA Conference in Manchester with boss—arr 12.30 P.M. ret 9:50 p.m.—rail both ways. Forget her!
Monday, Aug 3: consultant duties at Diabetes Centre in Ratcliffe Inf. Saw ten patients. Lunch in League of Fiends cafeteria. Forget her!
Attractive, clever, but perhaps hard streek somewhere?
Yes! Lewis felt pleased with his morning's work; and even more pleased with his afternoon's work, after he'd typed up the notes, correcting four of the six misspellings and tidying up one or two of the punctuational blemishes. There remained quite a bit of checking to be done, but none of it would be particularly onerous, and most of it probably unnecessary. The general upshot was unambiguous. None of the Harrison clan had murdered Flynn or Repp. Two of the three could have been on the scene when Barron was killed but neither of them had murdered him, because no one had murdered him. That was the only thing in the whole tragic business that now seemed wholly incontrovertible.
Fifty-six
Have I Got News For You!
(TV program title)
In nowise was Lewis surprised to meet Dixon in the police canteen.
“Busy day?”
“Well, yes and no really. Morse rang me up early—”
“He what?” spluttered Lewis.
“Well, early for me. Wanted me to check out on a few things, didn't he?”
“Such as?”
“Well, names of those going to lipreading classes these last few years.”
“Simon Harrison, you mean?”
“Didn't say, did he? No problem, though. Just got the lists photocopied, didn't I?”
“What else?”
“Well, funny really. He wanted me to find out who Flynn's dentist was—”
“He what?”
“Well, easy that. Then to find out something about that Mrs. Holmes—you know, before she was married… before she had her accident.”
Yes, Lewis could understand that.
“Then to ring that SOCO chap Andrews, the one who was out at Sutton Courtenay. Ask him to get a bit of a move on—you know, give him a kick up the arse, like, about the fingerprints. Morse got him to take Barron's, you knew that, didn't you?”
“Of course I knew that!” lied Lewis, euphoria fading fast.
“Well, there we are then. I suppose old Morse was just hoping, you know …”
Yes, Lewis knew exactly what Morse had been hoping.
“Has Andrews found anything?”
“Well, still working on it, isn't he? Messy old job, he said. Soon as he had any news though … Anyway I called round and stuck the stuff through the door. He was there, I reckon. The telly was on—”
“What?”
“ Yeah, pretty certain of it. But he didn't come to the door. Odd sort of chap, isn't he?”
But the introductory “Well”s and the inquisitorial clausulae, (hallmarks of every Dixon sentence) had become too tiresome; and Lewis was glad when the canteen intercom cut across the conversation:
“Message for Chief Inspector Morse or Sergeant Lewis: Please ring Northampton SOCOs immediately. I repeat. Message for …”
Where are you, Dixon, in the hierarchy here? I'll tell you, mate. Nowhere—no bloody where—that's where!
Yet Lewis left such ungracious thoughts unspoken, jumping to his feet and leaving Dixon where he was, cheeks now jammed once more with a doughnut.
Two minutes later Lewis was through to an exultant Andrews, who wasted no time in breaking
the dramatic news: there was a “hit—”yippee!—a match of fingerprints! In the car. Two sets—definite, distinct. The prints of J. Barron, Builder, of Lower Swinstead!
As he walked back to the canteen (Morse's phone still engaged), Lewis reflected on his brief exchange of views with Andrews. Morse had asked for any news to be communicated to him direct, and if necessary at his home number, though as both men knew there'd been little chance of that. Yet the situation was now perfectly clear; and Lewis freely conceded that Morse's early conviction that Barron had been involved in the murders seemed wholly vindicated. No room for more than three people in the cluttered stolen car, surely? And since neither Flynn nor Repp had stepped out of that car alive, the discovery of that third set of prints, Barron's, was of momentous significance: Barron himself had been in the car. The logic sounded pretty childish when it was put like that but…
Andrews's guess had been that Morse had suddenly fallen into some deep slumber after—well, after whatever; and Dixon's guess that he'd been watching TV with the volume too high. But the latter explanation seemed unlikely. Morse could (Lewis succumbed to his second unworthy thought that day) could have purchased some pornographic video; but would he have been able to master the operating instructions? Doubtful—especially having no children (better still, grandchildren) to explain things to him. Morse seldom watched TV anyway, or so he claimed. Just the news. Just occasionally.
Lewis finished his coffee, slowly coming to terms with the extraordinary news he'd just received: that Barron was a murderer—the second thing in the whole tragic business that now seemed wholly incontrovertible.
He rang Morse once again. If the call wasn't answered, he would drive down and see the situation for himself because he was getting a little worried.
The phone was ringing.
The call was answered.
Fifty-seven
Ah, could thy grave, at Carthage, be!
Care not for that, and lay me where I fall!
